


all my friends are as sharp as razors

by waketosleep



Category: Green Hornet (2011)
Genre: Badasses, Codependency, Gen, Heroism, Loyalty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-19
Updated: 2011-02-19
Packaged: 2017-10-15 18:36:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waketosleep/pseuds/waketosleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not so much codependency as just a saving-each-other thing. What are friends for?</p>
            </blockquote>





	all my friends are as sharp as razors

The first time Britt saved Kato's life was in the rubble of the Sentinel office, when the sight of Kato staring down the barrels of Chudnofsky's gun pushed him over some kind of edge he hadn't known was there. Britt's whole reason for existing became the need to get to Kato before Chudnofsky pulled the trigger. He, well, kind of failed in that, but at least Kato got an opening to strike, so whatever.

The second time Britt saved Kato's life didn't go down like that.

"And _stay_ down!" Britt shouted, throwing one last right hook at the scarred Armenian gangster slumped in front of him. As the guy crashed limply to the ground, Britt wiped his face on the sleeve of his coat and turned around, looking over the other four crumpled heaps on the ground for Kato.

"Let's--" he started, and then faltered. Kato was gone.

"Dude?" he called, turning in a slow circle. The empty club didn't stir, although a Justin Timberlake track was still thumping out of the couple speakers that hadn't gotten shot up. Britt picked his way through broken glass and splintered tables to the door; Kato might have left him to it and gone to start the car.

Except Black Beauty sat dark and silent at the curb, in the no-parking zone where they'd left her. Britt frowned and ducked back into the club. The only obvious place to go was up the staircase that hugged the wall to his left, so he jogged over and climbed it as quickly and quietly as he could manage. He was huffing a little by the time he got to the top; it was a tall staircase and he was hot in his suit and coat and okay, still out of shape a little. Whatever. Britt pushed through the door at the top of the stairs and found himself in a hallway lit by recessed lights and lined with bamboo in square pots. He'd run out of knockout pellets a while ago, so he left his gun holstered as he crept down the hall to the far door. His footsteps were swallowed by the carpet and he listened carefully through the blood rushing in his ears, trying to figure out if there was a threat behind the door.

It was shut but not all the way, and Britt crouched and pushed it in a scant inch to see inside the room. There was a desk or something beside the door that blocked some of the view but he could see a man's back, a tall guy with short, dark hair who might have been the Armenians' leader. He heard a voice from off behind the door that apparently belonged to a second guy. Probably huge and probably packing something ridiculously overcompensating, with Britt's luck. He stood up slowly, trying to stay close to the wall beside the door, and now he could just make out Kato, sitting on the floor in front of the gang boss.

The gang boss moved his arms, his shoulderblades shifting under his dress shirt, and Britt heard the click of a round chambering in a handgun. He gripped the doorjamb tightly as his heart hammered in his chest and he listened, trying to come up with a plan.

"Who do you assholes work for? This is the last time I will ask you," the gang boss said.

Kato sounded like he was in pain. "Told you, no one. People work for _us_. Asshole."

"Arto," the boss said, "help him cooperate. He does not seem to understand what trouble he's in."

"Why you take me?" Kato gasped as Arto, who was indeed a very large man with a shoulder holster on, moved to stand beside the boss and stare down at him. "Why not take Green Hornet? You think I know more than him? He is in charge of us."

"You think I'm an idiot?" the boss snapped. "We know you're the brains of the operation."

The joke was on these fuckbags, thought Britt as he pushed the door open another few inches, since the real brains of their operation were probably at home right now, wearing pajamas and watching Jersey Shore reruns. He spied a heavy glass vase on the table beside the door and picked it up, testing its heft as he slipped into the room on silent feet. The goon had a gun in his shoulder holster that Britt could take if he had to, to shoot the boss before he got a chance to fire on either of them. It was going to be quick and messy, but he was going to pull it off. Britt crept forward, raising the vase, and met Kato's eyes for an instant before he struck.

Later, when they got back in the car and Kato revved the engine over the sound of approaching sirens, he asked Britt, "You okay?"

Britt looked up from scrubbing off his hands with an alcohol wipe. It was turning pink. "I had to save _your_ ass and you're asking _me_ if I'm okay," he said blankly.

Kato shrugged but kept his eyes forward as they raced for the freeway. "Just a question," he muttered.

Britt thought about his blood-soaked alcohol wipe and the red-flecked sleeves of another shirt he was going to have to burn. His ears rang from the sound of an unsuppressed gunshot in a small room and when he closed his eyes he could see the blood spray from the Armenian gang boss' head, the slumped heap of his goon after Britt had cracked his skull with a vase. Kato's relieved look as Britt cut the cable ties that had been binding his arms and legs.

It was the first time Britt had ever killed someone, that he knew of. "I'm fine," he told his hands. The worst part was that it was true.

There was a short silence. "Okay," said Kato, taking a hard right that made the tires squeal.

***

The sixth time--maybe, they didn't keep track--that Kato saved Britt's life, they weren't even in costume.

Britt was sitting in some kind of abandoned office space, tied to a metal chair with a lot of rope, wearing a shirt and slacks that smelled like Chanel and Patrón and sweat and blood. He'd only gone out the night before in the first place because Lenore had made him, saying that he hadn't been seen out in too long and it was going to make the papers soon. So he'd grudgingly accepted an invite to a Grammys after-party and he wasn't quite sure how he'd gone from there to here but he thought roofies might have come into play.

"Can you stop pacing?" he asked his kidnapper, who was wearing a hole in the concrete floor and giving him a headache.

"Are you sure they're going to bring my money?" the guy said, mercifully stopping.

"Dude," said Britt tiredly, shutting his eyes against his throbbing temples. "If 1.5 million dollars in cash was that easy to round up, my pool would be full of money instead of water, okay? Give them like, an hour. Or do you have someplace to be?"

The pacing started up again and Britt started taking deep, controlled breaths. It figured that he'd get kidnapped when he wasn't even on the job as the Hornet. He missed his suit, and his mask, and his gas-gun, and his trenchcoat full of hidden pockets of weapons to fuck people's shit up. Instead he was wearing wrinkled Armani and it was all just useless.

After another twenty minutes of unsuccessfully trying to kill the kidnapper (his name was Dave, apparently) with his brain, Britt heard a noise and looked up to see Kato at the door. He was wearing a suit and carrying what looked like Britt's old hockey bag. That was going to be some awful-smelling money.

"Who's this?" Dave demanded, pulling a gun on Kato.

"Hey, take it easy, man," said Britt. "He's my executive associate. He's probably brought your damn ransom money."

Kato nodded shortly and walked into the room, holding out the hockey bag. He set it down several feet away from both Britt and Dave the Kidnapper and stood up straight, his hands folded in front of him. He looked so calm and professional that Britt could barely stand it.

Dave the Kidnapper stalked over to the hockey bag and unzipped it, revealing stacks of bills. He lifted a few bundles to look underneath them and then dropped them back in the bag and stood up. "It had better all be--"

He was cut off pretty abruptly when Kato punched him in the face.

Britt watched in fascination as Kato laid into the guy, stealing his gun and tossing it into the hockey bag between punches. Dave staggered back and then lunged, trying to get a few good swings in, but Kato just moved around them like he was water and finally caught Dave by the shoulders, kicking him in the kneecap and turning him away as he howled. Britt looked on with a sense of inevitability as Kato's hands moved to grasp Dave's jaw and twisted it hard to the left.

The crack, to Britt's mind, should have echoed, but it was just a faint noise like someone popping their knuckles or spine, and Dave dropped heavily to the floor, his head bouncing a little. Britt winced at that, not that Dave could feel it anymore.

Kato stepped over Dave's body like it wasn't even there, pulling out a switchblade and walking around the back of Britt's chair to saw at his ropes. "Sorry it took so long," he said as Britt tugged his arms free, wincing at the air on his raw wrists. Kato handed him the knife to cut loose his own feet. "Lenore didn't think I should come."

"What?" said Britt, who felt his face go hot with the blood rush as he bent over to fit the knife blade under the rope. "What was she going to do, let me die?"

"No," said Kato, and when Britt looked up he shrugged. "Cops. Lawyers."

"Well, you're more efficient, at least." Britt shook his left leg free and started in on the right. "I can't wait to get home and shower."

"Should probably do something about the body first."

"Ugh," said Britt, "we're on like the sixth floor."

"Doesn't need to be in good shape if we hide it. We can roll it down stairs."

Britt looked at Dave the Kidnapper, sprawled awkwardly on the floor beside his ransom money, and felt suddenly exhausted. "I'm gonna leave this whole thing up to you, man."

Kato crossed his arms and tilted his head at Dave, considering. "Maybe just push it out a window."

***

The argument could be made that Lenore did a lot of life-saving, since she insisted that Britt and Kato would be long dead without her around, but she also saved their lives in a direct, physical way exactly once.

Britt and Kato were in the weedy yard behind an old warehouse, kneeling on the gravel in front of Black Beauty's front grille with their hands and feet bound. A twitchy guy in a suit named Bugsy, who had only nine fingers left, was pointing an assault rifle at them. Kato had a dislocated shoulder and was hissing in shaky breaths through his teeth; Britt was just thinking about how ripped-off he felt that his life wasn't flashing before his eyes in his last moments, but his pity party was interrupted by a shrill voice coming from the alley at one side of the warehouse.

"I said watch the merchandise!" the woman snarled, and Britt recognized it as Lenore's voice an instant before she staggered around the corner with Bugsy's bodyguard holding her hands behind her back. She was wearing yoga pants and a t-shirt with a goth Care Bear on it, and her purse was still on her shoulder even with her arms wrenched behind her.

"What is she doing here?" Kato muttered.

"How the hell should I know?" Britt muttered back, staring at her. Bugsy had turned a little to stare too, although his gun never wavered.

"Is she your backup?" asked Bugsy, and then he let out a bark of a laugh. "A chick in pajamas? I knew you guys were amateur hour."

"We have no idea who that is, you've just got some innocent bystander," Britt tried.

"What the fuck have you assholes gotten yourselves into now?" Lenore snapped as the bodyguard hauled her to a stop several feet away from them. "I tried to call both your phones _and_ the car and got nothing, so I turned on the GPS tracker and followed you out here. You were _supposed_ to be off tonight!"

Bugsy raised an eyebrow at Britt. Lenore looked Bugsy up and down.

"Is this that meth dealer? The one I told you not to go after yet because we weren't prepared?"

"My name's Bugsy."

Lenore ignored him. "Why do you make me do all your thinking for you if you're not going to listen to what I say anyway?"

"Maybe they love the sound of your sweet angel's voice," suggested Bugsy. Britt bit the inside of his cheek to cut off a smirk, because Lenore in a rage sounded like a cat being stepped on.

"Look, Bugfuck--"

" _Bugsy_."

"Whatever your name is," Lenore said absently. "I wasn't speaking to you. I was speaking to these two morons who probably deserve whatever you've done to them already and sometimes maybe even what you still want to do to them."

Bugsy frowned.

"I had a hard time following that too," said Britt tiredly. The bindings on his wrists were cutting into his skin and his knees were killing him from pressing into the hard gravel.

"Make her shut up," said Bugsy to the bodyguard finally, and he obediently pulled out his gun and pressed it to the side of Lenore's head.

Lenore froze and Britt and Kato watched her nervously. Britt's heart pounded; she was never supposed to have gotten into this so far, she was supposed to have been safe and removed from all the shit they got into. And now she was going to be shot in an empty lot on the south side at one in the morning and probably chucked into a landfill along with them, and Britt couldn't think of a fucking thing he could do about it.

But Lenore didn't look that panicked. Her eyes were narrowed and she was staring fiercely at nothing, and Britt realized she was thinking really hard. He started wondering how fast he could hit the deck and if Kato was picking up the same vibe he was.

She moved suddenly, so fast Britt almost didn't catch it: raising a sneaker-clad foot and stomping down hard on the bodyguard's instep. He buckled forward in surprise and pain and she twisted, grabbing the gun with both hands and hip-checking him backwards as she yanked it away. Lenore turned and fired twice at Bugsy before he had his assault rifle pointed all the way towards her, and he toppled backward from two slugs in his chest, hitting the ground hard as the rifle fell from his hands and skittered away. When Britt turned his attention back to her, she was holding off the bodyguard with his gun in a self-assured two-handed grip. Her purse had slid down to catch on her elbow.

She tossed her hair out of her face. "You've seen my face, now, and I can't let you go," she said in a hard voice before shooting him, too, once in the chest and once in the head. She dropped the gun as he fell and then flexed her hands before digging through her purse for a kleenex. Britt and Kato watched her wipe her prints off the gun without speaking, and she kicked the rifle further away from Bugsy's lax, outstretched hand as she walked over to them with a swiss army knife in hand.

"Jesus," Britt managed as she cut him free; his voice was scratchy in his dry throat.

"Where you learned to shoot?" Kato demanded.

"I used to date a cop," she said softly as she moved to free Kato, too. "Couldn't use my own, though, in case they traced it back to me."

"You have a gun in there?" Britt asked, staring in shock at her bag.

Lenore stood up and dropped her pocket knife back into her purse as Britt and Kato climbed shakily to their feet. She shrugged. "Rape whistles are a waste of time. Come on, let's get the hell out of here. I need to drink all of Britt's scotch."

"Sure thing," said Britt, still in a daze as she dug out the keys to her Jetta and walked away, jangling them.

"You drive," said Kato tightly, walking around to the passenger side of Black Beauty and opening the door with his good arm.

"I'm fucking glad she's on our side," said Britt as he got in and started the car.

Really, they were probably lucky they'd snapped her up before the side of evil had found a chance to make a convincing offer.

 

THE END


End file.
